Several recent projects rekindled my interest in mobile devices. Sure I use my laptop every day, and my smartphone is indispensable. But could I make better use of my own, and better yet, could we do more to support our mobile users.
In today’s post, I’ll tell you how pervasive wireless is at
UW based on stats collected between January 15, 2013 and February 15th.
About 42,800 are devices used by 26,700 undergraduates. An average of 85% of Full Time undergrads
have used one or more mobile devices. It
varies by faculty and department.
Faculty
|
% with devices
|
Arts
|
85
|
AHS
|
81
|
Eng
|
79
|
Env
|
81
|
Math
|
96
|
CS
|
100
|
Science
|
77
|
(My Math numbers include CS)
Half the students have exactly one mobile device they’ve
used at UW; the other half have 2, 3 or more. Note however, some may be cases where a person upgraded to a new device.
Percent Ugrads With This Exact # of
Devices
|
||||
Faculty
|
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
Arts
|
50
|
41
|
7
|
0
|
AHS
|
48
|
41
|
7
|
0
|
Eng
|
57
|
47
|
11
|
1
|
Env
|
52
|
42
|
7
|
0
|
Math
|
49
|
47
|
12
|
1
|
CS
|
52
|
46
|
11
|
1
|
Science
|
50
|
45
|
7
|
1
|
What products to students use? At one time years ago the then-Associate Provost of
Computing thought to declare Apple products as unsupported by IST. Now a third of all people use some form of
Apple product, or as it turns out, several Apple products. But in recent developments, Android makes a
strong showing, particularly in Engineering, Math and CS.
Percentage of Total Devices
|
|||||
Faculty
|
android
|
iphone
|
ipad
|
mac
|
windows
|
Arts
|
22
|
32
|
8
|
32
|
42
|
AHS
|
20
|
31
|
5
|
34
|
40
|
Eng
|
40
|
26
|
8
|
18
|
39
|
Env
|
20
|
30
|
7
|
34
|
38
|
Math
|
38
|
43
|
16
|
25
|
41
|
CS
|
51
|
35
|
11
|
27
|
45
|
Science
|
23
|
29
|
7
|
30
|
41
|
What is exciting is that a large number of people have
devices which are wifi connected and yet portable enough to bring
everywhere. It used to be that laptops
had to be heavy, bulky and have short battery lives. Only a few years ago the industry was banking
on netbooks to fill that niche – but consumers largely disagreed. The
surge in smartphones, tablets and super light ultrabooks has changed the
landscape.
Engineering Computing labs still fill a particular niche –
they provide consistent and modest cost access to software which would be prohibitively expensive to have students buy, They will probably be dominated by Windows
for some time, just because that’s where the heavy duty Engineering
applications live right now. But we are
also rethinking other services we offer to deliver a good experience where
users live – and increasingly that space is mobile.
If you have ideas on useful mobile apps, or any sort of
useful application, or comments on our services, please Email me: erick@uwaterloo.ca
Erick
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